Power Panel: Creating Safer Cities

From L to R: Durgadutt Nedungadi, Director, Marketing & Alliances,TSG,HP; Capt Raghu Raman, CEO & Secretary, National Intelligence Grid, Ministry of Home Affairs India; Maj Gen T M Mhaisale, Commander HQ Technical Group EME; Deepak Mhaisekar, Municipal Commissioner, Nanded Municipal Corporation; Dalbir Singh, National Secretary, All India Congress Committee; Sameer Kochhar Chief Editor & CEO, Skoch; Gursharan Dhanjal, Editor, Inclusion; Harald Jung, Head of Business Segment Civil & National Security, Siemens; Thomas Mathew, Deputy Director General, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses; Col Sandeep Sudan, Regional Head-North India, Mahindra Special Services Group.

Capt Raghu Raman, CEO & Secretary, National Intelligence Grid, Ministry of Home Affairs chaired the power panel on ‘Creating Safer Cities’. Panel discussed need of safety and security of Indian cities. Being centres of our economic development, they should be safe and secure so that every citizen can earn livelihood peacefully also safer cities attract more FDI.

The eminent panellists at this panel were Dr Thomas Mathew, Deputy Director General, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses; Maj Gen T M Mhaisale, Commander HQ Technical Group EME; Mr Durgadutt Nedungadi, Director, Marketing & Alliances, TSG, HP India; Mr Harald Jung, Head of Business Segment Civil & National Security, Siemens; Col Sandeep Sudan, Regional Head-North India, Mahindra Special Services Group.

Issue of safer cities becomes important for India because of the geopolitically disturbed neighbourhood, Naxalite and Maoists problems, sophisticated terror attacks and insecure hinterlands.

Safer cities are must and India should be cautious because it would be among big economies of the world by 2040. Panel marked out that the Naxalite and Maoists problems are our own making and it reflects failure of our delivery system in the remote rural areas of our country. Partly, responsible are our Administrative services.

There is a need of overarching body to mobilise responses of all our security agencies. Recent attacks in our cities highlight the need of training and equipping our police forces to improve their responses is a before NSG or any other competent body arrives at the scene of crime. To make our cities safer and better, Panel brought out some of fundamental steps like evolving a National ID like UID for every resident Indian, Data Mining is important - networking and linking of databases across the country is very important for discovery of knowledge. This seam less movement of information would help in vibrant as well as effective management of crimes.

For secure and safe cities it is important to bring all the technological know-how under one umbrella. Secure IT systems should be established to counter cyber attacks. Security of critical resources and amenities centres like Power Supply, Water Supply etc is very important as they can be soft targets.

Pre-emption, Deterrence, Prevention, Detection, Reaction, Damage Minimisation are the guiding principles for creating Safer Cities. Technology as an enabler should be aligned to people and processes. The important factors that can effectively contribute in creating safer cities are:

• Situational awareness;

• Response capability to be self reliant;

• Crisis Management should be well planned and documented as well;

• Business continuity planning and disaster recovery;

• Incorporation of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED);

• Better security engineering is required to reduce cost of ownership.

Eventually, citizen safety has to be the prime concern while we secure our cities.